Feeder – Loughborough University, 01/11/08 (Silent Cry Tour)
After spending about 2 years away from touring (only playing the odd festival or one-off gig) Feeder are finally back on the road in support of their latest album, Silent Cry, released earlier this year.
Upon getting in, we could tell that it would be a good show; the venue was pretty much full to capacity, although thankfully we managed to secure ourselves a pretty good position just behind the soundstage.
Fightstar opened the show, playing a mixture of old and new tracks, including their new single, The English Way. Many people are put off by Charlie Simpson’s history as a member of Busted, but I rather like them, Charlie has a pretty decent voice and they manage some nice melodies as well as some very heavy riffs, interspersed with some nifty keyboard work. So yes, I thought that they did pretty well.
And then they went off, we waited, and the transition section between ‘We Are The People’ and ‘Itsumo’ on Feeder’s new album started playing. For those that haven’t heard it, it’s basically a quiet bit with a voice repeating ‘We Are One’ a few times. Anyway, this heralded the band’s entrance to the stage, to cheers all round, followed by a blasting rendition of ‘We Are The People’. Then we go back a bit to their previous album with ‘Feeling A Moment’ and a crowd-waking ‘Shatter’, not that there were many people around who needed it.
All through this, the screens behind them are showing images to go with the songs. For most of them it’s something pretty simple, but also suitable – one that I thought was particularly good was the backdrop for ‘Fires’, another song from their new album, which featured the bird from the album cover in full flight, with fire burning around it.
‘Buck Rogers’ did, as usual, send the crowd crazy, with the entire audience singing along with it. The crowd had actually started singing it whilst guitars were being swapped before one of the previous songs, to which Grant (vocals/guitar) jokingly said ‘Yeah, we’re not playing that one tonight.’ Clearly, didn’t really mean it, much to the crowd’s delight.
After a few more tracks, and closing on ‘Lost & Found’, the band go off stage to have a rest for the encore. For which only Grant comes back on, armed with an acoustic guitar. What followed was a brilliant acoustic version of the album’s title track, ‘Silent Cry’, giving Grant the chance to show off his voice, and the crowd more of a chance to rest in preparation for the inevitable conclusion to the show: the very impressive and crowd pleasing combination of ‘Seven Days in the Sun’ followed by ‘Just A Day’. This really got the crowd going, with everyone screaming the lyrics, as well as, as is traditional, the opening riff for ‘Just A Day’.
Finally, the band went off stage for the last time, and it was time for us to leave. It had been a great night for everyone, and I think we showed the band that the decision to come to Loughborough for the first time was a good one, although Grant did comment at one point that we’re all crazy in this place. The one thing I did notice is that one of Grant’s most used guitars, the ‘Jazzbird’ that he normally uses to play ‘Come Back Around’, ‘Just A Day’ and a few other songs, didn’t make an appearance, throughout the show, which was a little odd, but didn’t detract from the show at all. As one of my friend’s told me after the gig: ‘That was the best £22.50 I’ve spent in a long time’.
